History of Church

The Saint Thomas Christians in India from 52 to 1687 AD

by István Perczel

1. On the St Thomas Christians

The Saint Thomas Christians refer to themselves in this way because their
tradition holds that their ancestors, who all came from the high castes of Hindu
society, were converted by the Apostle Saint Thomas, who landed in India in the
year 52 AD. At present there is no way to scientifically prove or disprove this
tradition. One thing is certain: ever since the discovery of the monsoon winds
in 45 AD by Hippalos, an Alexandrian ship-captain, the land and sea routes were
open from the Mediterranean via the Persian Gulf to India, and there were indeed
intense contacts between these areas. One after the other, Roman coins of the
first century AD are being unearthed in southern India.

Be that as it may, the tradition of Christ’s Apostle doing missionary work in
India is the principal formative element of the identity of a large and
flourishing (at present seven million-strong) community. At a certain stage of
its history, this community entered into intense contacts with the Syrian
Christian world. Tradition also tells us that this happened in 345 AD, when
Thomas of Kana, a rich Syrian merchant from Persia, also landed in Cranganore,
accompanied by seventy families. Their descendants, the endogamous Knanaya
community, boast of having preserved pure Syrian blood. Thomas of Kana and the
bishops who accompanied him established a permanent contact with the Syrian
Church. So, if we are to believe tradition, ever since Thomas of Kana the
Malabar Church, consisting of an Indian and a Syrian component, has
ecclesiastically and culturally belonged to the Syrian Christian world. Thus the
St Thomas Christians constitute an unique community, whose native tongue is
Malayalam, whose everyday culture and customs are typically Indian and whose
language of worship and of high culture has been Syriac for many centuries.

In fact, for this high-caste Indian Christian community Syriac had the same
social function as Sanskrit had for the neighbouring Hindu high-caste society.

2. Traditions about St Thomas the Apostle

According to tradition, Christianity in Kerala was founded by Saint Thomas the
Apostle, who landed on the Malabar Coast, at Maliankara near Cranganore (Kodungallur),
in 52 AD. Why precisely in 52 is difficult to say, but this date is firmly held
in the present traditio communis of the St Thomas Christians. For how long the
date has been established is an interesting question in itself. The modern
Malayalam ballad Thomas Ramban Pattu (“The Song of the Lord Thomas”), which
gives absolutely precise data about the details of the Apostle’s activity, dates
his arrival to 50 AD, in the month of Dhanu (December), and his death in
Mylapore (Mailapuram) to 72 AD, on the 3rd day of the month of Karkadakam
(July), corresponding to the traditional memorial day of the Apostle in the
Syrian Churches, at 4:50 p.m. However, this apparently reflects a later
tradition. Recently we found an earlier tradition in a palm-leaf manuscript
belonging to the collection of the Syro-Malabar Major Archbishop's House in
Ernakulam, which, among eighteen Malayalam apocrypha, also contains the
Malayalam version of the Acts of Thomas. The seventeenth-century redactor's note
to this apocryphon dates the death of Saint Thomas to December 21 and says that
on that very day the Apostle's memorial day (Dukhrana) was universally
celebrated in the Malankara Church.

On his arrival - so tradition holds - the Apostle converted several Brahmin
families, from whom a good part of the present-day Nazranies descend, and
founded seven churches: Maliankara (Kodungallur or Cranganore), Palayur,
Kottakavu (North Parur), Kokamangalam (Pallipuram), Niranam, Chayal and Kollam (Quilon).
There is a beautiful story vividly recounted among the local Christians and
invoked in many books about the foundation of the Palayur church, not far from
Cranganore where Saint Thomas is believed to have landed, and close to Guruvayur,
the famous centre of Krishna worship. According to this tradition, the Apostle
arrived there and found several nambudhiri (or namputhiri) Brahmins (that is,
Kerala Brahmins) bathing in a tank and throwing up handfuls of water as an
offering to their sun-god. He asked them whether they were able to throw the
water up so that it could stay suspended in the air without falling back down,
as a proof that their god had accepted it. The Brahmins replied this was
impossible; the Apostle performed a miracle and the water remained in the air,
proving that Christ had accepted the offering. This convinced the Brahmins, who
accepted baptism from the Apostle in the same tank. Their temple was transformed
into a Christian church, while those who stuck to their Hindu faith fled from
the place. They cursed the land and called it Chapakatt (Chowghat in the
Anglicised version, now Chavakkad), “the Cursed Forest.”

Some sixteenth-century Portuguese sources, partly edited but for the most part
unedited, studied by the very learned Fr. Mathias Mundadan, the doyen of Indian
Church history, speak about converted kings, from whom another name of the
community, Tarijanel, which tradition interprets as “sons of kings,” derives.
Later the Apostle went to the eastern Coromandel Coast, where he also converted
people, and finally died on the Little Mount in Mylapore, nowadays a suburb of
Chennai (Madras). There are several versions of the details of the Apostle’s
death, the most fantastic of which states that one day a hunter out hunting
peacocks saw a group of them seated on a flat stone. He shot an arrow at the
leader of the group, which was transformed into a man and fell down dead. This
was the Apostle. Other accounts, emphasising the point that Saint Thomas died a
martyr’s death, speak about furious Brahmins who pierced the Apostle with a
lance, either when he was praying in rapture in a cave or when he destroyed, by
means of his cross, a temple dedicated to the goddess Kali. His tomb is
venerated in Mylapore up to the present day, and pilgrimage to the tomb has
always been an important element in the religious life of the St Thomas
Christian community.

The tradition that locates the Apostle’s activity in two places, Kerala on the
western and Coromandel on the eastern coast of southern India, corresponds to
the historical existence of two communities. However, some calamities have
destroyed the eastern community, which at some time (differently specified in
the different sources) had to migrate westward and to unite with the one in
Kerala. A version of the tradition transmitted by Francisco Roz, the first Latin
bishop (residing in Angamaly) of the St Thomas Christians, does not know about
the preaching of the Apostle on the Malabar Coast, but holds that all the St
Thomas Christians emigrated there from the east. An interesting element of the
local traditions is that – at least in Portuguese times – the same stories were
told on the western and on the eastern coast, but connected to different
localities. At present there is no autochthonous Christian community on the
Coromandel Coast.

In Kerala almost every village has its local Saint Thomas tradition, full of
miraculous elements. Just to collect them would be a very important task of
anthropological research.

Most of the literature on the question treats the historicity of the Apostle’s
presence and activities in India, trying to combine the different western and
eastern testimonies with elements of local tradition and archaeological
findings. The general outcome of these investigations is that the question of
the historicity of the tradition is unsolvable by means of the scholarly methods
that we have at our disposal. The strongest argument in favour of the
historicity remains nothing other than the tradition itself, an unanimous
tradition held not only in India, but also in the whole Christian Orient. Here
we also face something quite extraordinary, which deserves a different approach.
In fact, the very existence of the traditions concerning the Apostle, divergent
in their details but unanimous in their core message, and the role of these
traditions shaping the self-identity of the community, is a matter of objective
fact. Setting aside the question of how true historically the tradition is, we
should recognise the St Thomas traditions as constituting an important, if not
the most important, factor in the formation of the Nazranies’ communal identity.
The tradition of Saint Thomas preaching and converting in India and apparently
converting nobody but members of the higher castes expresses both the Nazranies’
embeddedness in the surrounding majority Hindu society and their separation. It
explains why they find themselves integrated into the Indian culture, speaking
the same language – Malayalam – as their neighbours. But it also explains why
they are separate, professing a different faith, Christianity. It also explains
their ambiguous but traditionally well-established position in the society.
Being Christians, they believe in the absolute truth and the sole saving power
of their religion. At the same time, they live in a society that has been able
to accept them as one among its organic strata, while also accepting Christ and
the saints as belonging to the community of the many divinities legitimately
worshipped by the different segments of the Hindu society. It considered the
Christians as one element belonging to the same society, and permitted them to
practise their professions (mainly trade and agriculture and, to a lesser
extent, military service), which were highly regarded by others. The Hindus also
venerated the Christian holy places, and they still hold the priests of the St
Thomas Christians in high esteem, considering them as holy men. This might not
have always been the case, and the remembrances in the tradition about earlier
persecutions may point to less tolerant periods and neighbourhoods. All this and
much more is admirably expressed in the founding traditions of the community,
connected to Saint Thomas.

3. Traditions of Thomas of Kana and the Earliest Syrian Connections

The identity of the St Thomas Christians is not exhausted by their being Indian
and Christian. They are also Syrian. As Placid Podipara says in an emblematic
writing of his, “they are Hindu or Indian in culture, Christian in religion and
Syro-Oriental in worship.” How they came under Syrian influence is again told by
stories preserved by the oral tradition. This speaks about the arrival of
another Thomas, Thomas of Kana (Knayi Thomman in Malayalam), a rich Syrian
merchant from Persia according to one version, but a Christian Jew originating
from Kana in Palestine, a relative of Jesus himself, according to others. The
Kerala tradition, which connects its events to absolutely precise dates, knows
that this happened in 345 AD. Normally this date is taken for granted both in
oral conversation and in writing. However, the early Portuguese witnesses give a
wide range of datings. According to some, this Thomas of Kana came even earlier,
so that he could still meet a servant of Saint Thomas, while others hold that he
came later, namely in 752 AD, some 700 years after the Apostle. The date 345
seems to come from or at least to be documented by a Syriac text written by a
certain Father Matthew, in Malabar, in 1730. With Thomas came seventy or
seventy-two families (this number representing the totality of a people, as in
the case of the translators of the Septuagint or in that of the greater circle
of the apostles). It is said that Thomas found the St Thomas Christians in great
spiritual need, and so he reorganised them and put them under the jurisdiction
of the Persian Church. In this way the jurisdictional link of the Malabar Coast
with the Syrian Churches would originate from this time.

An important element of the tradition is the famous copper plates that Thomas of
Kana is said to have received from the King of Malabar, the Cheruman Perumal. In
Kerala in the Middle Ages royal charters on privileges were written on copper
plates, generally in Grandha or Vattezhuttu (literally, “round script”)
characters. Communities belonging to different religions possess their own
copper plates – so also the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims. At present
some of the Christian copper plates are kept at some important ecclesiastical
centres, such as the Metropolitanate of the Mar Thoma Church in Tiruvalla and
the Syrian Orthodox Catholicosate in Kottayam. The copper plates are not shown
to visitors. Several mutually contradictory decipherings of them have been
published. In Portuguese times there seem to have existed the very copper plates
that were claimed to contain the privileges that the Cheruman Perumal king gave
to Thomas of Kana. In the middle of the sixteenth century the Portuguese
acquired them, but by the end of the same century they were lost. According to a
tradition noted by the Portuguese, these plates briefly related the story of
Thomas of Kana arriving in Cranganore and receiving royal privileges from the
king. These privileges were the following: he gave his own name, Coquarangon, to
Thomas, and he also gave him the “City of the Great Idol,” Magoderpattanam or
Mahadevarpatnam, and a great forest for possession forever, then seven kinds of
musical instruments and together with them all honours for the Christians to
speak and behave as kings do, so that their brides may whistle during their
wedding ceremony, just as the women of the kingly families do, to spread carpets
on the grounds, to wear sandals, and to ride elephants. Besides this he gave
Thomas and his people the right to five different taxes that they could collect.

Be that as it may, these traditions are also important formative elements of the
Kerala Christians’ identity and have an explicative value for their social
reality. In fact, it is these traditions that explain not only the Syrian
affiliation, but also a division between the Indian Christians, that is, the
division between two endogamous groups, the “Southists” (thekkumbhagar) and the
“Northists” (vadakkumbhagar). Both groups claim legitimate descent from Thomas
of Kana and the families that accompanied him, but only the Southists say that
they have conserved pure Syrian blood. The names are believed to come from the
fact that once the two groups inhabited respectively the northern and the
southern part of the Christian quarter of Cranganore.

Thus, it is to the time of Thomas of Kana that the tight jurisdictional and
cultural relationship between the Church of Malabar and the Persian Church is
traced back. According to some historians, this relationship meant purely and
simply an allegiance to the Church of the East; according to others, the Malabar
Christians were under the impression that the whole Orient belonged to the
Patriarchate of Antioch, so that the Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon would be a
representative of the Patriarch of Antioch. This debate is theoretically
unsolvable, but concrete research into the extant documents will surely decide
about the merits of each opinion.

4. Church Governance before the Portuguese Period

According to the traditional structure, the Indian diocese of the Church of the
East was governed by a Metropolitan sent by the Catholicos Patriarch, from
Seleucia-Ctesiphon. At the same time, on the local level, in India Church
affairs were governed by the Malabar yogam, that is, Assembly. There was also an
indigenous head of the Church of Malabar, called in Malayalam Jatikku Karthavian,
which, according to Jacob Kollaparambil, means “the head of the caste," that is,
the head of the St Thomas Christians, but also the "Archdeacon of All India."
Apparently, in his person an indigenous function, characteristic of the St
Thomas Christian community, was combined with an existing function of the Church
of the East. According to the canons of the latter Church, the Archdeacon is the
highest priestly rank: he is the head of all the clerics belonging to a
bishopric; he is responsible for the whole worship of the cathedral church and
represents the will of the bishop in his absence. One clearly understands how
the appointment of an indigenous Archdeacon of All India served the needs of the
ecclesiastical organisation of the Church of the East. While the Catholicos
Patriarch of Seleucia-Ctesiphon reserved for himself the right to send his own
prelates originating from Iraq to the Indian diocese, the continuous governance
of his Indian flock was secured by the indigenous Archdeacon serving as the head
of all the priests in Malabar and representing the bishop’s will.

However, from the local point of view, the rank of the Archdeacon was more
important than this; not only was he the most important priest of the community,
but he also fulfilled the role of an Ethnarch. He was “the prince and head of
the Christians of Saint Thomas” and had such titles as “Archdeacon and Gate of
All India, Governor of India.” The origin and the meaning of the term “Gate” is
mysterious. One might suppose that it is a Christological title: “I am the Gate
of the sheep” (Jn 10:7). While originally the Archdeacon in the Church of the
East was elected by the bishop according to merit, the office of the Archdeacon
of India seems to have been hereditary. It was the privilege of the Pakalomattam
family, at least from the sixteenth century onwards. Indeed, we know about a
number of Pakalomattam Archdeacons, beginning with 1502, when Metropolitan John
of India appointed George Pakalomattam. The name of the family varies, and the
family seems to be identical with the Parambil family, translated into
Portuguese as De Campo. The Archdeacon had all the attributes of a secular
leader and was normally escorted by a number, sometimes several thousands, of
soldiers. It is important to note that while there could be several bishops
appointed for the Malabar Diocese, there was always only one Archdeacon, a
custom contrary to the canons of the Church of the East. This situation is best
explained by the fact that from the point of view of the East Syrian Church
structure the Archdeacon was an ecclesiastical function, but from that of the St
Thomas Christian community it was also a socio-political, princely function,
representing the unity of the Christian nation, or caste(s), of Hendo (India).

5. The Early Portuguese Period

For any element whatsoever, such as the ones mentioned before, of the history of
the St Thomas Christian community before the arrival of the Portuguese
colonisers, one has barely any sources other than local traditions and
traditions. Documented history seems to begin with the arrival of the
Portuguese. The European documentation beginning with this period already
permits a fairly detailed picture of the social status, the life and the customs
of the Christians whom they found upon their arrival in southern India, and in
principle all the following, colonial, history of the community can be traced.
However, here as well, although to a lesser extent, history is inextricably
interwoven with oral tradition.

At the moment when the Portuguese arrived on the Malabar Coast, the Christian
communities that they found there had had longstanding traditional links with
the East Syrian Christians in Mesopotamia. During the subsequent period, in
1552, a split occurred within the Church of the East. Part of it joined Rome, so
that besides the “Nestorian” Catholicosate of the East another, “Chaldaean,”
Patriarchate was founded, headed by the Patriarch Mar John Sulaqa (1553-1555),
claiming to be the rightful heir to the East Syrian tradition. It is very
difficult to see the precise influence of this schism on the Church of Malabar.
Apparently, both parties sent bishops to India. Over against earlier, somewhat
romantic views, which took it for granted that there was a continuous line of
Chaldaean bishops, without any Nestorian interference, by now it has become
clear that the real situation was the following. The last pre-schism East Syrian
Metropolitan, Mar Jacob (1504-1552), died just when the schism occurred.
Apparently the first among the two Patriarchs to send a prelate to India was the
Nestorian Catholicos, Simeon VII Denkha. The person whom he sent was Mar
Abraham, who, later, was to be the last Syrian Metropolitan of Malabar, after
having gone over to the Chaldaean side. When he arrived in Malabar is not known,
but he must have been there already in 1556. Approximately at the same time,
Abdisho IV (1555-1567), the successor of John Sulaqa (murdered in 1555), sent
the brother of John, Mar Joseph, to Malabar as a Chaldaean bishop; although
consecrated in 1555 or 1556, Mar Joseph could not reach India before the end of
1556, nor Malabar before 1558, when the Portuguese were finally alerted by the
presence of Mar Abraham and allowed Mar Joseph, accompanied by another Chaldaean
bishop, Mar Eliah, to – very briefly – occupy his see, before the Inquisition
also sent him to Lisbon in 1562. In this way, nominally there were two rival
Syrian Metropolitans in Kerala until 1558, when Mar Abraham was captured, forced
to confess the Catholic faith in Cochin and sent back to Mesopotamia, to the
Chaldaean Patriarch Abdisho, who (re-)consecrated him Metropolitan and sent him
to Rome. There Mar Abraham was ordained Metropolitan a third time in 1565 by
Pope Pius IV. The Pope wanted Mar Abraham to reign jointly with Mar Joseph, who
in the meantime had returned to Malabar in 1564, only to be deported a second
time in 1567 and die in Rome in 1569. From Rome, Mar Abraham returned to
Mesopotamia and reached the Malabar Coast for the second time in 1568. Although
he was once again detained in Goa, in 1570 he managed to escape, and governed
the Malabar Christians until his death in 1597.

Taking into account the fact that Mar Abraham had gone over to the Chaldaeans,
the Nestorian Catholicos Patriarch, Mar Eliah VIII (1576-1591), sent another
bishop, Mar Simeon, to Kerala. Mar Simeon probably arrived there in 1576. He
stayed there until 1584, when he was captured and sent to Rome, where it was
discovered that he was a Nestorian and, on account of this fact, his ordination
as priest and bishop was declared invalid. He was confined to a Franciscan
friary in Lisbon, where he died in 1599.

It is reported that before leaving Malabar, Mar Simeon appointed a priest as his
“vicar general,” Jacob by name, who, according to the Portuguese testimonies,
resisted all the Latin innovations introduced under Mar Abraham and was finally
excommunicated by Archbishop Menezes of Goa before he died in 1596. However, as
this priest is also called Archdeacon, I would suggest that his role should be
reconsidered. The Chaldaean Archdeacon during the first part of the reign of Mar
Abraham was George of Christ, who was on friendly terms with the Latin
missionaries and was to be appointed the successor of Mar Abraham as
Metropolitan of India. Thus he should have become, according to the plans of Mar
Abraham, supported by the Jesuits, the first indigenous Chaldaean Metropolitan
of the St Thomas Christians. However, the last letter of Mar Abraham, where he
requests the Pope to confirm George’s ordination as Bishop of Palur and his
coadjutor, is dated January 13, 1584, while from another letter of the same Mar
Abraham we learn that the consecration of George failed because of the latter’s
death. After this, we hear about an Archdeacon with Roman allegiance, perhaps
John, the brother of George of Christ, appointed in 1591. As Archdeacon Jacob
appears on the scene as a leader of the Church of Malabar in 1584, I would
suggest that he was the one who inherited the office of the Archdeacon from
George. Rather than being appointed by Mar Simeon, the Nestorian Metropolitan,
he inherited the office by family right and sided with Mar Simeon against Mar
Abraham, which resulted in a very tense situation. The Roman side seems to have
tried to solve this problem by appointing a rival Archdeacon, the first one in
1591 and the second, George of the Cross, in 1593. In this way, although from
1552 rival Metropolitans sent by the two East Syrian Patriarchs contended for
the allegiance of the St Thomas Christians, still, until 1656, the date of the
consecration of Kunju Mathai (Matthew) as Archdeacon of the Latin allegiance
against Mar Thoma, the former Archdeacon now in revolt, there was only a very
brief period (between 1591 and 1596) when two rival Archdeacons contended
against each other.

6. The Synod of Diamper and the Syrian Orthodox Mission in India

Alexis de Menezes, Archbishop of Goa from 1595 until his death in 1617, together
with his Jesuit advisers, decided to bring the Kerala Christians to obedience,
an obedience that they conceived as complete conformity to the Roman or ‘Latin’
customs. This meant separating the Nazranies not only from the Nestorian
Catholicosate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, but also from the Chaldaean Patriarchate of
Babylon, and subjecting them directly to the Latin Archbishopric of Goa. The
most important stage of their activity was the famous Synod of Diamper (Udayamperur)
in 1599, when the local Christians’ customs were officially anathematised as
heretical and their manuscripts were condemned to be either corrected or burnt.
The oppressive rule of the Portuguese padroado (’patronage’) provoked a violent
reaction on the part of the indigenous Christian community. This was the Kunan
Kurishu Satyam (Bent Cross Oath) in Matancherry, Cochin, in 1653, when the
rebels, headed by their Archdeacon, made a vow not to accept any allegiance
unless to a Syrian Church. In the same year, Archdeacon Thomas was ordained, by
the laying on of hands of twelve priests, as the first indigenous Metropolitan
of Kerala, under the name Mar Thoma I. Later, in 1665, on the arrival of Mor
Grigorios Abd al-Jalil, a bishop sent by the Antiochian Syrian Orthodox
Patriarch, this movement resulted in the Mar Thoma party’s joining the
Antiochian Patriarchate and in the gradual introduction of the West Syrian
liturgy, customs and script on the Malabar Coast.

7. The Background and the Aftermath of These Events

During the entire period beginning with the intervention of Archbishop Menezes
of Goa in the affairs of the Church of Malabar in 1598, up to the consecration
of Archdeacon Thomas as Mar Thoma I in 1653 and his joining the Antiochian
(Syrian Orthodox) Patriarchate in 1665, events were dominated by a constant
tension between the Latin Archbishops designated by the Portuguese and the
Archdeacons leading the St Thomas Christian community. In 1597, Mar Abraham, the
last Chaldaean Metropolitan of India, died. Mar Abraham, although originally a
Nestorian and accused by the Jesuit Francisco Roz of holding ‘Nestorian’ views,
seems to have remained a faithful Chaldaean bishop, that is, in sincere
community with Rome, as attested by his copy of the Nomocanon of Abdisho bar
Brikha of Nisibis, which he carried to Malabar and which is still preserved in
the Library of the Major Catholic Archbishop’s House in Ernakulam. Already the
scribe who copied the Nomocanon for Mar Abraham included the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan
Creed in its Latin form, with the Filioque, and on the first folio of the book
one can read a anathema by Mar Abraham on Nestorius.

Thus, if there was strife between the Portuguese missionaries and the indigenous
Christians and their Iraqi prelates, it was not of a truly doctrinal, but of an
ecclesiological and jurisdictional character. However, something else was also
involved: the identity of the St Thomas Christians. In their striving to
preserve their identity, after the death of Mar Abraham in 1597, the most
important role was given to Archdeacon George of the Cross, appointed by Mar
Abraham in 1593. Archbishop Alexis de Menezes, who was both an ambitious and
indeed violent person and a very able Church politician, succeeded in bringing
the Archdeacon to obedience and in abolishing the Chaldaean jurisdiction on the
Malabar Coast. How perfectly he succeeded is another question, where legends
once again begin to play their role. Be that as it may, under his immediate
successors this apparent success proved to be more ephemeral and less complete
than it appeared after the Synod of Diamper in 1599.

The strife between the Latin Archbishops and the Archdeacons – first George of
the Cross and then his nephew, Thomas Parambil (de Campo) – continued and
resulted in several revolts of the latter against the former, whenever the
Archbishop tried to curtail the traditional rights of the Archdeacon. In this
way George of the Cross revolted against Francisco Roz, Archbishop of Angamali
(1601-1624), first in 1609, when the latter excommunicated him, and also in
1618. Although George had more friendly relations with Roz’s successor, Stephen
Britto (1624-1641), he also revolted against the latter in 1632. The rule of the
next Archbishop, Francis Garcia (1641-1659), was again dominated by constant
tension between him and the Archdeacon, Thomas Parambil, until the latter
apparently decided definitively to break away from Roman jurisdiction. In
1648-1649 he sent a number of letters to several Oriental Patriarchs and thus to
the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, to the Syrian Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch
and most probably also to the Chaldaean Patriarch of Babylon, requesting them to
send bishops to Malabar.

As an answer to these letters, a certain Mar A'tallah, a bishop who called
himself Mor Ignatius, Patriarch of India and China, arrived in India, but the
Portuguese detained him in Mylapore and the rumour spread that he had been
drowned in the sea. His detention so enraged the Archdeacon and his party that
they revolted against the Jesuits. On January 3, 1653, a mass of people gathered
in Matancherry in Cochin, and swore an oath not to obey the Franks, that is, the
Portuguese, but only the Archdeacon, who on May 22 of the same year was ordained
bishop, under the name Mar Thoma, twelve priests laying their hands on him. This
was the famous Bent Cross Oath, during which almost the entire St Thomas
Christian community seceded from Rome. From the history preceding this event, it
is rather clear that this secession cannot be explained by its immediate
pretext, that is, the detention of Mar A'tallah, but was the fulfilment of a
long-nurtured wish of the Archdeacon, who could not accept his subjugation, and
of the local Christians, who wanted to preserve their traditions and autonomy.

This event was followed by a rather troubled period, further complicated by the
fact that the Dutch gradually conquered the Malabar Coast. In 1663 they
conquered Cochin and expelled all the Portuguese and other European
missionaries, with the exception of some Franciscans. At this moment the
Apostolic Commissary, Bishop Joseph Sebastiani, had no other choice than to
consecrate an indigenous prelate for the remaining party that did not obey Mar
Thoma, the former Archdeacon and current bishop. For this purpose he could not
but choose another member of the same Parambil family, considered as the leader
of the community: Alexander de Campo, or Mar Chandy Parambil, who was the cousin
of Mar Thoma and originally one of his main four helpers or advisers during the
Bent Cross Oath. He made Mar Chandy Parambil a Vicar Apostolic and a titular
bishop only, but Mar Chandy Parambil considered himself a Metropolitan and
signed his documents as “Metropolitan of All India.” Moreover, in 1678, he also
appointed an Archdeacon, who happened to be his own nephew, Mathew Parambil (or
De Campo). Thus, at this point, due to the binding force of the events and the
strategic thought of Bishop Sebastiani, there were to be found two bishops of
the St Thomas Christian community, who were close relatives of each other, both
from the traditional leading family of the Nazarenes.